Back in the days of the Atari 2600, most games were created by a single individual
who did the design, programming, graphics and sound. These days it takes large
teams of people many months (years!) to create a single game. But back then, if
you had the skills you could program a 2600 game by yourself in a few short months
(weeks!) As time passed and the capabilities of systems improved, more people
were needed in order to produce a quality game.

The information provided below comes from many different sources. Some companies,
such as Activision,
were pretty open about who their programmers were. Others, such as Atari,
kept this info in the dark (probably to keep other companies from stealing their
talent!) Several classic gaming programmers have publicly spoken about their
accomplishments, and for those individuals information is generally comprehensive.
We also used The Giant
List of Classic Game Programmers as a reference in compiling our list of
programmers for Atari systems. And some games have the programmer's name listed
in the manual, on the cartridge, or somewhere in the game itself.

The list below is by no means complete. For that matter, this list is only
a small subset of programmers who worked on titles for Atari systems. Unfortunately,
as time goes on it's likely that such information will be even harder to come
by. If you know someone who worked in the classic game industry, please
let us know! We'd love to hear from them and would like to fill in as many
blanks as possible. And we're not just talking about programmers here, we'll
also acknowledge designers, artists, musicians, and so forth.